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The Reason for Frugality

The society that we all live in is starting to crumble.  It will not collapse overnight, but will take a slow and bumpy ride down the slope to oblivion.   How long that process will take is up for debate, but unless there is a major change in the way that we use energy and other non renewable resources, that collapse will come sooner rather than later.  The signs are already there in things like the real wage of the middle class, which has been dropping since the 1970’s and has really started to drop in recent years.  In the US, the official unemployment rate is in the region of 9%, but the rate when people who have given up looking for work, the number is more in the vicinity of 25%.  In the US, 45.8 million people, or 15% of the population are using food stamps.  The divide between the rich and the poor is reaching record proportions.  Add on to this the problems of peak oil and climate change, and we are in a real predicament.

At this point, there is very little chance of avoiding a collapse, and the few opportunities that do exist are being ignored.  Civilization as a whole appears to be doomed.  For the individual though, there is the chance to prepare and to smooth the ride down.   One of the main things that needs to be done is to get off the consumer bandwagon and learn to live within your means.  The banks will be one of the last organizations to fail, as they have the most resources to work with, and so you will need to be out of debt to the banks, or they will confiscate what little you do have left if you are in debt to the banks.   People need to learn skills that will allow them to sustain themselves, to provide themselves with food, clothing and shelter.  Stop going to restaurants for all your food, learn to cook at home from scratch.  You will be living healthier and saving money at the same time.  Learn to do at least simple home repairs.  No need to call a plumber to fix a broken toilet.  The parts are simple and easy to replace.

A couple of generations back, people were much more self sufficient and relied mostly on their own skills, so it is possible for people now to relearn these skills.  One of the problems that will be faced is that a lot of these skills have been lost, since the current generation do not see the need to learn these skills from their grandparents, and in most cases that generation has died off, and those skills have been lost.  A lot of things will have to be relearned, although fortunately some skills have been documented in old books.  This generation needs to learn these lost arts so that they can prosper in the rough times ahead.

By practicing frugality, you learn to live with a smaller footprint on the environment, and have the added bonus of saving money.

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Competition

A lot of the issues that we see today can be boiled down to competition.  Companies are competing against each other and so have to make sure that they have the lowest costs, and so are inclined to ignore damage to the environment.  Even in government the parties are more concerned with getting their particular party in power than in making sure that the country runs effectively and efficiently.  I read recently that the house leader for the Republican party in the US is not concerned with getting people working, he is more concerned with getting Obama out of office, and getting a Republican in as president.

People are too concerned with getting the most they can for themselves and not what is best for society as  a whole.  If there was a change in mindset of the people so that they were more concerned about how society is working rather than just making sure that they were going to come out on top, there would be a lot less strife in the world.  There needs to be a change in the way that corporations and government are run, so that cooperation is the driving force.  If there was cooperation between companies, there would be a lot less duplication of effort in research and development, as each company would share the research that they have done.  There could also be more efficient use of equipment, as when one company was under utilizing a piece of equipment, another company could use that free equipment to produce their products.   They would pay for the use of the equipment, and so both companies would win, the owner of the equipment would get some money for the free time on the equipment that would otherwise sit idle, and the other company would be able to increase their production without having to invest in equipment that would likely not be fully utilized.

Greed is also a result of competition.  Some people will do anything to make sure that they have more than everyone else, and as a result they are the only ones that win.  If there was cooperation, then the group could work together to raise all their standard of living.  An example of this is the health care system in the US.  The main reason that I can see that people are opposed to public health care is that they are concerned that their money is being used to treat other people.  If they would look at the public health care in other countries closely, they would find that due to a reduction in bureaucracy, the health care system produces better results for lower costs, lower than they are currently spending for a system that leaves some people without any health care at all, and leaves others bankrupt due to health care bills.  If they used the cooperative model, and all worked together for everyone to have access, the costs would be lower and all citizens would have access.

Cooperation will lead to a more sustainable society, and the sooner that is realized and implemented, the easier it will be to create that sustainable society.